New jobs portal for staff-hungry resources sector

A new resource industry online jobs portal was activated yesterday as the federal government discussed how to shift workers in low-growth sectors to areas of high demand.

The Australian Mines & Metals Association had developed the miningoilandgasjobs.com portal to help fill vacancies in the booming resources industries, director Minna Knight said. It joins the Minerals Council of Australia’s jobs and careers portal, which also links people seeking work with advertised job opportunities in mining regions.

“With other sectors of the economy shedding jobs and Australian workers seeking ways to enter the resource industry, miningoilandgasjobs.com has generated thousands of hits and continues to gather further momentum well before its official November launch," Ms Knight said.

The government estimates more than 70,000 skilled workers will be needed in the industry over the next five years.

The AMMA website also aims to attract applicants from overseas and provides links to immigration information as well as on life in Australia for people contemplating a move.

The federal government acted to increase skilled migration for regional areas and large resource projects in the May budget as it responded to the National Resource Sector Employment Taskforce report. It overhauled temporary business visas to speed up processing times and allowed bloc or enterprise migration agreements for major resource projects investing at least $2 billion and employing 1500 workers. The government and resources sectors are also committed to training and reskilling domestic workers for large mining projects.

Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union national secretary Michael O’Connor said yesterday that while he recognised the need for skilled labour in some cases, more needed to be done to employ locals. “If we’re going to have skilled migration we need to have labour market testing to demonstrate there is a need to bring people in," he said.